This part of the blog was written last night, February 8th, 2021 :
I wanted a night off from War Fare (and you probably did too), so I decided to look for something fun, short and easy, and I ended up with a Ten Little Indians mystery called "Secret of the Blue Room"(1933), which came with the bonus of having our pal Edward Arnold in a featured role. Gloria Stuart stars as "Irene von Heldorf", a charming young woman who lives in a castle with her widowed father (Lionel Atwill). This is one of those Single Location movies which are usually the context for TLI plots, and the castle - with it's many rooms (and the all important Blue Room) - serves as that location.
Irene is celebrating her 21st birthday with her father and three suitors, each of whom swears he loves her more than the other two. The youngest one, Tommy, has known Irene since childhood and is especially passionate in his declarations toward her. During the birthday dinner, Irene's father has regaled her boyfriends with tales of the castle's history, including that of the "cursed" Blue Room, in which several guests have mysteriously died over the years. Tommy wants to win Irene so badly that he challenges her other two beaus to a contest : each of them will spend a night in the Blue Room. Tommy will go first. Whomever survives will claim Irene's hand. It's a macho dare coming from Tommy, thrown up at the older gents, one of whom is a military officer, the other a sophisticate.
Against Irene's protestations, Tommy does spend a night in the Blue Room, and when he goes missing, Edward Arnold, playing the local detective, turns up to investigate. At a certain point it will be necessary for him to call the entire cast into the living room to solve the crime, as per the formula in all Ten Little Indians movies, but this one has a spark to it. It's not overly talky (many of these films have too much expository dialogue), and there is an intriguing mystery that continues to build as the other two chaps take their turns sleeping in the dreaded Blue Room. At 66 minutes, you can't go wrong, especially when Arnold shows up in the second half, to put the screws on everyone he suspects in Tommy's disappearance.
Two Thumbs Up then, for "Secret of the Blue Room", and we're not quite done, because.......
This part of the blog was written tonight, February 9th, 2021, and I have another motion picture for you, entitled "Cipher Bureau" (1938). Just a brief review for this one, which stars early (but recognizable) actor Leon Ames as the head of a government code-breaking unit, which intercepts radio transmissions from spies on American soil and sets about translating their messages. When Ames' brother - a naval officer - is assigned to the group, he becomes easy prey for a beautiful Double Agent (Joan Woodbury), because he's a newbie in the spy game. But of course she falls in love with him, according to the laws of box office plot.
However, instead of being - again - a dialogue based exposition fest, this flick has action and a level of energy rare for a movie from a cash strapped studio. It not only moves, but features some truly interesting scenes where we see the codes being broadcast, over bulky radio sets, by foreign agents reciting their messages phonetically, voicing only vowel sounds, including all the variants on the letter "A", and so on. Later, an enemy pianist plays his new composition over the air. The codebreakers figure out that he's using the corresponding letters in the musical scale to send yet another message, and they have a translator at the ready who can transcribe the notes on a special typewriter at a thousand miles an hour. For these scenes alone the movie is recommended, but the forward motion of the story is the main draw. It's proof that an extremely low budget doesn't have to mean an uninspired production. Two Thumbs Yet Again (he shoots he scores....)
That's all for tonight. In books, I am still working on "To the Last Man : Spring 1918" by Lyn Macdonald, so I'm not done with the World Wars just yet, and I suspect we'll be watching some more documentaries down the road, but during my next period off work - which begins on Friday - we'll tackle another Rossellini History movie, and another legendary epic that I've reserved from the Libe. That one is over four hours long, so be sure to eat your Wheaties when the time comes. ///
And as Henry replied, when asked what he knew by Mary's father as they sat at the dinner table in "Eraserhead" :
"Oh........not much of anything".
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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